Muazu Jaji Sambo, the minister of transportation, has said that the Federal Government is determined to create close to 21 million jobs in the transportation sector in order to lift 35 million people out of poverty by 2025.
Sambo, who announced the 2025 growth plan at the 2022 Ministerial Retreat held recently in Akwa-Ibom State, said the transportation sector was setting the stage for achieving the Federal Government’s commitment of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years.
According to Sambo, infrastructural gaps in the sector necessitated the development of the National Development Plans; Medium-Term Development Plans 2021-2025, and a Long-Term Plan called the Nigeria Agenda 2050.
The plan, he said, would help the government to invest in transport infrastructure, ensure macroeconomic stability, enhance the investment environment, improve living conditions and implement climate change mitigation.
According to him, the development plans are aimed at growing the transportation sector in the country as a medium-term plan that will drive an effective, intermodal, safe, reliable, affordable, and sustainable transportation system that will contribute to the growth of the economy.
He said the stakeholders in the transport sector need to collaborate to improve safety and security in transportation.
He said the sector will create jobs through professionalism and human capacity building, strengthening institutional governance, regulation, and multi-modal infrastructural development.
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The minister listed the five high-level strategic goals of the Ministry to include achieving a safe and secure transport system, driving economic development, facilitating connectivity through intermodal and multimodal, developing local capacity, and ensuring sustainability.
“These goals have become a blueprint for tracking performance towards the delivery of our mandates, and to address the bottlenecks militating growth of the transport sector,” the Minister said.
Sambo however said that the implementation of the 25-year Railway Modernization Programme, the Port Master Plan, and Inland Waterways Transportation Development will also help in creating jobs in the sector.
The government will also create jobs through the creation of a private sector-led national fleet and manpower capacity development.
Sambo, who is optimistic that foreign private investors will soon begin to patronise the sector, said the Ministry has made several presentations in different forums on the investment opportunities that exist in the transport sector.
